Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other

"There's many a strange impulse out on the plains of West Texas;
There's many a young boy who feels things he don't comprehend.
Well small town don't like it when somebody falls between sexes,
No, small town don't like it when a cowboy has feelings for men.

But as you may have heard, iconoclastic country singer Willie Nelson has recorded his own version of the gay cowboy love song, which he debuted on the Howard Stern show back on Valentine's Day in a support/tribute to Brokeback Mountain, and which can be downloaded through iTunes. Which I did, and it's awesome.

The Boondocks has devoted an entire two strips to the song so far. Not sure what the angle is here besides snickering. And if you haven't already, check out my Brokeback cartoon.

Monday, February 27, 2006

For more than 30 years, Seattle science-fiction novelist Octavia Butler dreamed up fantastic worlds and religions, made-up creatures and futuristic plots. Then, in her stylistic prose, she used them to tackle the social issues she was most passionate about.

"Parable of the Talents," a futuristic story about a utopian community ravaged by civil war, explored modern-day issues of intolerance, the growing gap between rich and poor, and environmentalism. In her first novel, "Kindred," she plunged into racial issues when a modern-day character was transported into the body of a pre-Civil War slave.

"What [Ms. Butler] was writing for the first time was a kind of woman's-eye view, a very smart woman's-eye view, of say, 'Brave New World' or '1984,' " said writer Harlan Ellison, Ms. Butler's friend and mentor.

Ms. Butler died Friday at Northwest Hospital after a fall at her home in Lake Forest Park. She was 58...

you are disgusting lady
i just want you to know that its people like you who allow those kinds of fags get away with the crap they are putting our nation through.
lets compare morals again
you:
enjoys taunting people who are trying to help others
advocates sodomy and other perverted practices (whats next? sex-ed its not just text books anymore! sicko)

bush:
Takes out a brutal dictator who is guilty of attempted genocide and personally tortured dozens of people
does as much as he can to rebuild a city that should be scrapped
pulled our nation out of a depression that a large percentage of economist were projecting for the past couple years

yeah
so shut up and burn in hell

I must say his logic puzzles me. (Since when has Bush done as much as he can to rebuild New Orleans?) But this definitely made me laugh. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Goodbye, Roe. As if a federal late-term abortion ban with no exception for a woman's health wasn't enough, now South Dakota anti-choicers are pushing through a near-total abortion ban with no exception for a woman's health, or in cases of rape or incest. A ban they're hoping will be challenged in court all the way up to the Supreme Court. From the Boston Globe:

PIERRE, S.D. -- South Dakota lawmakers approved a ban on nearly all abortions yesterday, setting up a frontal assault on Roe v. Wade at a time when some activists see the US Supreme Court as more willing than ever to overturn the 33-year-old decision.

Governor Mike Rounds, a Republican, said he was inclined to sign the bill, which would make it a crime for doctors to perform an abortion unless it was necessary to save the woman's life. The measure would make no exception in cases of rape or incest.

I hope the cartoon is not too obscure. My point is just that the ban makes a false claim that there is a medical consensus that these procedures are never medically necessary for a woman's health, which is total crap--tests often don't detect severe fatal fetal anomalies until long past 12 weeks. It's not a ban on a specific procedure, it's a large-scale attack on reproductive rights and Roe as a whole. Doctors have testified that they must have discretion to perform late-term abortions for health reasons--but I suspect Alito and his buddies don't care enough about women's lives to listen.

Monday, February 20, 2006

Go see this movie now: C.S.A. (The Confederate States of America)A movie review

"What if the South won the Civil War?" Kevin Willmott's C.S.A. (The Confederate States of America) is a brilliant satirical science fiction mockumentary based on this premise. The piece takes the form of a "controversial" British-produced historical documentary being aired for the first time in the "Confederate States of America." Like the Ken-Burns documentaries it imitates, C.S.A. is mainly based on photographs and "historical" documents, but also includes clips from fictional films such as "I Married an Abolitionist!" and a D.W. Griffith film depicting the capture of Abraham Lincoln's attempt to escape to Canada in blackface ("Dishonest Abe"). Nixon and Reagan even make cameo appearances as mainstream pro-slavery politicians (recalling the latter's famous racist campaign reference to "states rights").

C.S.A. may be low-budget, but it is written and executed perfectly, managing to make you think, laugh, and gasp from shock and horror all at once. This is no one-note skit, but a skillful, completely realized nightmare vision of an imperialist America where African- and Asian-Americans are slaves, all of South America is a colonized apartheid state, the few remaining Jews live on reservations, and women have yet to receive suffrage. An America who sided with Hitler in World War II but still bombed Hiroshima, an America whose only ally in the world is South Africa and who dreams of enslaving all the non-white, non-Christian peoples of the world.

Yet somehow, like one of Dave Chappelle'sskits about the KKK, C.S.A. manages to be genuinely funny (if you don't believe me, watch the trailer). Appropriately enough, it opens with a quote from George Bernard Shaw: "If you're going to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh: otherwise they'll kill you."

Because of course what is most shocking about the fictional world of C.S.A. is that it is all-too-familiar. And the movie includes real historical figures like prominent Louisiana physician Samuel A. Cartwright, who diagnosed runaway slaves with what he called "drapetomania"—a mental illness characterized by an unhealthy obsession with freedom and running away. And as a television broadcast it is interspersed with commercials for the "Home Slave Shopping Network", radio-powered slave shackles, a C.O.P.S.-style shop called "Runaway" and racist products like "Darky Toothpaste" and "Niggerhair Cigarettes" --the latter two, of course, both being actual products sold in this country until all-too-recently.

Hell, forget all too recently. How about now? The trade in racist memorabilia is alive and well. Last April, Masheka and I took a trip to New Orleans and were horrified to discover that EVERY SINGLE gift shop we went into in the French Quarter sold statues or placards or candy featuring the worst kind of old-school racist caricature-based blackface imagery ("aunty", "uncle" and "pickaninny" characters with giant red lips and bulging white eyes) under the cover of nostalgia. We started making a depressing game of it, almost, seeing how long it would take us to "spot the slavery" nostalgia products in each shop. The whole mess was so frustrating we ended up not buying any souvenirs at all.

But back to C.S.A. The movie premiered at Sundance in 2004, but is only now going into a limited nationwide release (I saw it this weekend in New York). Highly, highly recommended. Rating: **** 1/2 (4.5 out of a possible 5 stars).

Silly Girl, Only Men Can be "Masters of Cartooning"!Put down that brush, you might get ink on your pretty little fingers!

My first thought when I heard of the "Masters of American Comics" coffee-table book and gallery show was "Cool." And my second thought was: "I wonder if they included any Misstresses of American Comics?" The answer, of course, was no. As Natalie Nichols writes in her review of the show ("Where the Girls Aren't"):

What becomes a Comics Master most? What else but that all-important authoritative accessory, a penis?

Sorry, just had to get that off my chest. Because, yeah, I know: The joint exhibition Masters of American Comics, currently on view at the UCLA Hammer Museum and MOCA?s Grand Avenue, is not a comprehensive look at U.S. comics creators over the last 100-plus years (some of whom actually were ? gasp! ? women). It's a sampler of sorts, an "in-depth analysis" of 15 pioneering American comics artists whose influential innovations blended a mastery of craft with an ability to create atmosphere and emotion on the page.

and

Why not include passing mentions of Dale Messick, creator of Brenda Starr (which debuted in 1940); '50s EC artist Marie Severin, who also worked for Marvel from the '60s to the '90s; Ramona Fradon, a DC Comics artist in the '50s and '60s, who also drew Brenda Starr after Messick's 1980 retirement; or Wendy Pini, cocreator of the 28-year-old ElfQuest series, which, among other things, was manga-influenced long before most U.S. artists took to the now hugely popular Japanese comics? Instead, female cartoonists are relegated to a brief acknowledgement of the '70s emergence of artists like Trina Robbins and Aline Kominksy-Crumb.

To her list of pioneering "why not mentions..." I'd also add Roberta Gregory. Ironically enough, Ms. Nichols' piece appears in an L.A. Citybeat comics-themed issue that includes interviews with such awesome cartoonists as David Rees and Kyle Baker... but not one woman cartoonist.

In another similar irony, I was looking over some sample syllabi for teaching comics as literature at the excellent National Association of Comics Art Educators site. Most of the comics as literature courses include texts by at least one woman cartoonist, but all twelve of the primary texts for this Yale course ("Comics as Literature, Comics as Art") are by men (and all white men at that, I think), and even the long optional "supplementary reading" list includes only one or two women. But my favorite is this item in the optional historical reading:

Trina Robbins, The Great Women Superheroes (1996). Also, A Century of Women Cartoonists (1993) and, with Cat Yronwode, Women and the Comics (1985). A subject not spoken about enough.

I love the passive tense there. If he were honest, he would have said "A subject I didn't care enough about to include in my course." (Those books are excellent histories, however, check them out at Ms. Robbins web site).

Really, we shouldn't have to be dealing with this crap anymore. This should be old hat. After all the "women in comics" and "where the hell are the women in comics?" panels and articles, why do so many guys still have a mental block on women cartoonists or cartoons by women? It's true that the comics world (like the editorial cartooning world) is still male-dominated, but collections like "Masters in Comics" don't just innocently reflect that domination, they perpetuate it. There are plenty of amazing brilliant women cartoonists out there. Check out this crazy-ass long list from Friends of Lulu of "Women Doing Comics," or some of the cool women in my links list.

As a side note, as I was writing this post I received an email from a magazine editor asking me if I could send her a list of women political cartoonists. Apparently a male writer had proposed a piece about editorial cartoonists and was insisting that there was only one woman worth mentioning in the entire field. Sigh... I guess he never heard of Pulitzer-prize winners Signe Wilkinson and Ann Telnaes, pioneering cartoonist Etta Hulme, or alternative cartoonists such as Jen Sorensen, Stephanie McMillan and yours truly.

Further reading about the lack of women in the Masters show:

"Why have there been no great women comic-book artists?" This piece seems to unable to decide if its because there weren't any good women artists or that the styles preferred by women have been overlooked in favor of superhero comics. But that's no excuse--some of the "Masters" in the book, like Chris Ware, are much more recent, and there are plenty of contemporary women masters of comics.

women artists are generally nothing but trouble... there's always a lot of emoting and waving of their arms through the air. their work is generally of a lesser caliber and usually strays from 'fine art' into the realm of 'self-expression'. that's fine when you're in college, but not so hot in the real world.

The curator of the exhibit acknowledges that he's received complaints about the lack of women but insists "this is just one show."

Friday, February 17, 2006

I've been interviewed recently for Punk Planet, the New Standard, and the Humanist Network News, and I'll post links to all those pieces when they become available.

I haven't given up on drawing a weekly comic strip about Brooklyn life and such, it's just on hold until I totally redesign this website and make it user friendly. I spent the last week testing a lot of different content management systems and blog software--Movable Type, WordPress and ExpressionEngine. It was a fun and nerdy pursuit, and I taught myself all about CSS and a little bit about using MySQL and PHP. I would have gone with WordPress, but I needed something more powerful for my cartoon galleries, so I ponied up the cash for ExpressionEngine (which is what they use over at InTheseTimes.com).

I am tired and sick of staring at my computer screen but I have to write two more posts after this.

There is a bug in my blog--most of my posts DON'T have anything after the jump, yet they look like they do from the links. When I switch blog formats I will fix this.

Today, the race to the bottom in the Danish cartoon controversy continues. A Pakistani Muslim cleric and his supporters are offering cash and cars to anyone who will kill one of the 12 Danish cartoonists who drew caricatures of the prophet Mohammed. (see MSNBC article, found via Masheka).

Maulana Yousef Qureshi, a cleric in the northwestern city of Peshawar, said during Friday prayers that he personally had offered to pay a bounty of 500,000 rupees ($8,400), while a jewelers association was putting up $1 million, and others were offering $17,000 plus a car.

Qureshi repeated the offer at rally later in the city to protest against the cartoons.

This is just terrifying, and of course very reminiscent of the threats against novelist Salman Rushdie some years back. Maybe I need a new profession. Cartoonists are apparently worth far more dead than alive.

Meanwhile, buildings are burning, people are dying in protests, and this whole mess shows no sign of simmering down. So what the hell is going on here? Is this Cartoon World War III? A "clash of civilizations"? Are these protests just a "spontaneous" reaction to religiously offensive cartoons? Why would protesters torch a KFC if what they're really angry about is a collection of 12 Danish drawings?

As a cartoonist, I've been asked a lot lately for my opinion on this whole mess, so the following is a summary of my thoughts on the mess (the BBC has an FAQ as well). Please note this is just a rough summary of how I understand this controversy, and I've had to leave a lot out, but hopefully I've included enough links to factual articles for folks to be able to draw their own conclusions.

Which side are you on, anyway?
Before you start reading this, I've been getting a lot of emails/responses to this post accusing me of somehow supporting fundamentalist Islamists and their desires to behead cartoonists and oppress women and gay people. So let me make this clear: I'm a feminist pro-gay atheist cartoonist of Jewish descent, I believe in democracy and freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and I in no way support any forms of religious fundamentalism or bigotry or repression of women and GLBT people. I just think a lot of the historical and other complexities have been totally left out of discussion of this controversy.

How did this all start?Back in September a right-wing Danish newspaper editor named Flemming Rose decided to commission a bunch of caricatures of the prophet Mohammed. Mr. Rose claimed it was his intent to comment on the self-censorship of illustrators who were afraid to draw Mohammed, but it seems likely his intention was to deliberately offend Muslims, who are a minority group in Denmark and often the targets of racism and xenophobia in Europe. Mr. Rose's paper, the Jyllands-Posten, had rejected cartoons depicting Jesus for fear they'd cause an "outcry." More importantly, the paper has a history of strong anti-immigrant leanings, and played a key role in the rise of a conservative government in 2001 in an election focused on immigration issues. Further, Mr. Rose has been linked to notorious xenophobe Daniel Pipes. In fact, some of the cartoonists actually commented on Rose's xenophobic agenda--instead of depicting the prophet Mohammed, one drew a cartoon calling the Danish paper a bunch of "reactionary provocateurs." The cartoonist were paid a measly $73 each with the promise their names and photos would be published.

What else might be going on here? Were these protests spontaneous?I think this whole business could use some historical context (watch a short ad to read that piece). Large numbers of Muslims were deeply offended by what they saw as an all-too-typical assault by the West. There's a history behind this--until recently, much of the Muslim world was heavily colonized by Europe, Muslim immigrants in Europe are constant targets of racism, and then there's the U.S. bombing and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. So it wasn't like relations between the so-called "East" and "West" were all that rosy to begin with. Tensions were already running high.

So I'm sure some of this feeling is spontaneous, but I doubt it's just about the cartoons--it's like the Jyllands-Posten dropped a lit cigarette in a dry forest. A lot of these protests, the things being burned, seem to be less about the cartoons themselves than about local issues--the cartoons almost seem to be a catalyst or an excuse for protests against local governments, or rallies for radical groups. Also, a lot of these protests seem to have been carefully engineered and calculated by various Muslim groups and government leaders, both secular and non, to gain political capital. For example, in Egypt, you have a fairly secular government denouncing these cartoons to gain political capital with more hardline fundamentalist Egyptians.

So what do we have as a result?On the one hand, we have Muslim clerics offering a $1 million reward for the murder of Danish cartoonists, we have burning buildings and riots and dozens dead at this point, and many Muslims who hate Europe and America even more than previously. Iran has commissioned a disgusting Holocaust-themed cartooning competition (never mind that the cartoons were for a right-wing Christian paper, Iran is somehow claiming these cartoons are the work of Zionists, which is unsurprising since their psycho leadership claims the Holocaust never happened).

On the other, we have a bunch of Europeans and Americans convinced that all this just proves their racist stereotypes about Muslims were right all along, that all Muslims are crazy and violent and against freedom of speech. Right-wing pundits like Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter (who called Muslims "ragheads" in a speech recently) are in heaven, all of a sudden they are crusaders for free speech but they've forgotten their own attempts to get cartoonists like Ted Rall fired for drawing left-wing cartoons they didn't like.

They're ignoring the moderate Muslims who have spoken out against the violence, and the peaceful protests, and most won't admit that these cartoons could be seen as offensive. Many mainstream and even left-wing editorial cartoonists are drawing giant hooknosed Arab Muslim caricatures with scimitars and turbans chopping off cartoonists' heads and hands. Way to go for raising the level of debate.

Even when right-wingers like Coulter admit that Christians and other religious groups are also inclined to vigorously protest when they feel offended, they insist that only Muslims do so violently, and only Muslims insist the rest of the world must live by their beliefs.

So that's wrong too. But that doesn't IN ANY WAY excuse the behavior of hate-mongering radical Islamist clerics or any other violence. Sure most of the cartoons were offensive and tasteless and pointless, but a cartoonist who draws tasteless cartoons reasonably expects angry letters and possible picketing, not a million-dollar reward for his beheading. All of the cartoonists, whatever their intentions or beliefs, have been forced into hiding afraid for their lives.

Is this really just about free speech? Are there double standards at work here?No, and yes. If this was just about free speech, that same Danish paper wouldn't have rejected the Jesus cartoons for fear of offending readers, and the right-wing Americans championing the cartoons wouldn't be so quick to condemn American liberals for their "blasphemy" and "treason". And speaking of double standards, newspapers in the Muslim world are full of viciously offensive racial caricatures of Jews.

Also, free speech may not have been the real goal of the Jyllands-Posten to begin with, but it may become a casualty nonetheless. Fellow cartoonists tell me their editors have become more skittish and fearful about what cartoons they might run.

So what's the solution?Damned if I know. Diplomacy is certainly needed, but not to the extent that the mainstream media or governments abandons free speech and becomes even more timid and watered-down claptrap than it already is (see the BBC Forum for some of their listeners' answers to this question).

Thursday, February 16, 2006

I was already drawing a cartoon about same-sex marriage. Bill Frist brought up that stupid Federal Marriage Amendment again, and Bush is spending $500 million to help anti-gay organizations "promote opposite-sex marriage" (what, is it some fancy new product that no one's heard of before, so it needs an advertising campaign?)

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

On a whim, I decided to try out CafePress' newish black T-shirt function. Buy this shirt now in white or black at Mikhaela's Cartoon Depot, prices range from $12.99-$22.99! Or go crazy, buy a dog T-shirt or a tote bag or a sticker or a button, I don't care.

I thought about putting a bullet hole in the design, but there are SOOO many more reasons to be scared of Cheney, and this seemed a bit more straightforward and elegant, so I left as is.

Monday, February 13, 2006

Please help support Mikhaela cartoons!The Boiling Point needs YOU!

It's time again for my semi-annual reminder: if you enjoy my cartoons, please help ensure they continue running! I do this cartoon in whatever free time I can find in addition my full-time job, and I don't make any money off of this website right now. I only make money when newspaper editors find out about my work and choose to run it in PRINT. Right now my cartoon runs in only a handful of papers and on a few web sites, so trust me, the continued existence of the Boiling Point depends on you.

There are a few ways you can help:

Let my existing papers know you care! People usually send in letters to complain; letters of praise are rare. Newspaper editors REALLY pay attention to these things--since so few people write, one letter is considered to represent the viewpoint of thousands of readers. Space is at a premium in all publications (especially in print, where every inch of content is an inch not paid for by advertisers), so if you appreciate an article, column, or, say, CARTOON, it's important to let the editors know, whether or not your letter actually gets published.

Trust me, it really matters, especially for an obscure cartoonist like me with so few clients.

Let other papers know you care! Write to your favorite local alt-weekly editor, and tell them about my stuff. (Be sure to include a link to my cartooon website or better yet, to one of your favorite cartoons).

Link to my cartoons and blog in your blog. Blog traffic means there's a bigger chance that my cartoons will get noticed by edtiors.

Saturday, February 11, 2006

Radical Misunderstanding

I received a very angry letter in response to my BrickBob GayBash cartoon today, one that totally missed the point:

First off, YOU ARE A FUCKING ASSHOLE!!!!! I cannont believe that there are honestly people in the world like you who put out such hate into the world and then slap God's name on it to make yourselves feel better. YOU ARE SO STUPID IT HUMORS ME. I don't understand why all of you people seem to only jump onto homosexuality when picking a sin to point out. Why don't you assholes stand in front of a buffet and protest fat people?? After all, gluttony is also a sin. I am so glad that I can raise my child to be a tolerant and loving person, to EVERYONE. Not just some people because others are different.

I wrote back explaining that the piece was a satire, and that I am a pro-GLBT cartoonist who works for gay newspapers.
It saddens me that anyone reading this cartoon could take it seriously, but I think that's more a symptom of the fact that the antigay groups are so crazy, they picket funerals, hell, they very well MIGHT draw a cartoon like that. Sigh...

This website and blog will soon be undergoing a major redesign which has been badly needed since 2002. I will also be moving to either Moveable Type or Wordpress, I don't know which is better yet. Anyone who has tried both, please chime in.

At some point in the next month, I will be lauching a second comic strip, with like, characters and a plot and stuff. Still with a political edge, don't worry.

Thursday, February 09, 2006

The so-called conservative Doonesbury...

...but, you know, minus the humor and interesting characters. And including an imaginary black conservative dude invented by a white conservative guy to make fun of silly white liberals. August has the goods and links to remixes of the cartoons.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

So I've been getting really excited about the idea of doing a political humor comic strip about the lives of young (mostly broke) 20-something Brooklynites, but I had this sudden worry today:

Is that just navel-gazing?

Sure, the cast would be of various sexual orientations and ethnic backgrounds, and it would have a decidedly feminist emphasis, and would be about things that are weird or funny or ridiculous, but...

Yeah. I'm still going to do it, but I have to think about this. The characters should be ordinary enough to relate to but eccentric or extraordinary or funny enough to be interesting. At the same time, I reject the idea that all comic strips should be about amazing huge events that change the world or overblown superheros or absolutely nothing and I also think it wouldn't make a huge amount of sense to do a strip about characters I don't at all relate to--the whole point is an outlet for some funny stories and ideas I have about my peers.

Hmm... well, at any rate, I promise it will be interesting. I think the main thing is creating memorable characters with distinctive personalities (as in Bloom County or Calvin and Hobbes).

Saturday, February 04, 2006

I disagree that trying to infuse a moral grey-zone into the abortion issue is somehow wrong. Trying to narrow the topic of abortion down to a litmus test of government power over individual rights simplifies the issue too much. Few things in this world are purely good or bad, yes or no.

I am opposed to the practice of abortion; even if it is not murder of a life, it is undeniably a denial of potential. But I have no desire to see Roe vs. Wade overturned by the Supreme Court or even in a public election. It is a necessary evil, allowing women intent on having abortions to see qualified doctors in properly equipped facilities. Making abortion illegal will not put an end to the practice, I fully acknowledge that, and so the deciding factor for me is whether or not the life of the mother-not-to-be should be endangered along with the fetus.

I will not support anybody's decision to have an abortion, but I will not try to prevent them from following up on that decision. It is their life.

I think the best thing to work towards, no matter how unlikely, is a world where abortions are not necessary. Zero abortions. Even if there never will be a world like that (which I expect to be true), at least we should still be working to educate teens about sexuality and sexual awareness, to make people accepting of discussing sex/birth control in reasoned debate, to provide proper medical care to people that cannot afford it themselves. A lot of this involves issues of health care, education, and other social issues as well. Abortion is not some island-issue, unrelated to everything else.

And (maybe I am opening myself up here for a verbal lashing, but what the hell), is it too difficult to just expect women to abstain from sex around the time that their period may be coming? It is my understanding that the menstruation cycle is normal (every four weeks or so), not random. So would it be that hard to just go a couple days each month without? I mean, if women want to say that abortion is their issue alone, is it not their responsbility to avoid unwanted pregnancy to begin with?

Feel free to chew me out for that.

And just a question (if you're still reading): when you say you are an atheist, do you mean that you are completely closed to the idea of there being anything beyond what can be experienced by your senses?

I think I've made my views clear elsewhere that I totally disagree--like Katha, I of course want comprehensive sex education and easily available contraception, but I also think abortion needs to be safe, legal, and neither dangerous nor stigmatized. Aiming for zero abortions is just not possible. There is no perfect contraceptive method, and I think you're somewhat confused if you think that women abstaining from sex around the time of ovulation (which is NOT the same time as the period, that's generally one of the LEAST fertile times--see explanation here from Planned Parenthood) in addition to the use of condoms or pills should be expected or would ever be practical in any way. This totally puts the burden on women, and that I somehow doubt either women or male partners would be all that enthusiastic.

It's about as practical as abstinence education in general, which is to say, not at all. It involves a ridiculous amount of mathematics and calculations and basal thermometer use and requires a serious amount of time and commitment that just isn't warranted by the addition protection it might provide. And guess what? It's still not reliable. Far better to make sure every woman has easy over-the-counter access to emergency contraception.

As for saying that birth control is women's responsibility alone, it takes two to have sex, sir. Obviously women generally bear the burden of birth control methods such as the Pill or shots or IUDs or diaphragms, but that doesn't mean a male partner shouldn't help buy condoms or help pay for those other methods.

And regarding the atheism thing, when I say I'm an atheist I mean just what it says in the dictionary--I don't personally believe in God (though maybe I contradict myself, since I love the Jewish holidays and say prayers with my family at Passover and Chanukah and the like, but hey, life is full of contradictions). Now, scientifically speaking, I'm sure there could be something out there I can't detect with my senses, but since my senses are all I've got, I'm not likely to notice if I bump into it.

Really, it's more an absence of strong personal faith than anything, but I like to think I am respectful of other people's religious beliefs. Part of what really bothers me is that most religions are mutually contradictory--each is the "right one", and if you believe in one, everyone else's beliefs are wrong. So I'd really rather not get involved in all that. I've been told by many people that this actually makes me agnostic rather than atheist, but I like the word atheist better.

If you want to get into an argument with someone who will strongly argue against faith in general and who is a much more committed atheist than I, Matt Bors is your man.

Also, I know I have over a thousand readers a day, but apparently none of them enjoy commenting. Alas, all I can do is look up at the heavens and with a tear in my eye whisper "maybe someday I can have open threads!"

From August, who is dead-on when he recalls how right wingers like Michelle Malkin (who are now claiming to champion free speech by printing the cartoons) reacted to the Newsweek Koran in the toilet story.

And more from Daily Kos. Plus Ted Rall will REALLY be on TV tonight, on Hannity and Colmes at 9.

Authorities say Jacob D. Robida was hunting homosexuals when he walked into Puzzles Lounge around midnight.

After asking a bartender ''Is this a gay bar?," the 18-year-old New Bedford man, dressed entirely in black, allegedly began chopping at a patron with a hatchet, triggering a melee that ended with Robida wildly firing a handgun, according to court documents. Three men were hospitalized yesterday with serious but not life-threatening injuries, police said.

Robida fled the scene and faces about a dozen charges in connection with the attack, including assault, attempted murder, and civil rights violations, police and prosecutors said. State Police and local police were searching last night for him, warning that he was armed, dangerous, and mentally unstable. Law enforcement agencies nationwide were alerted to look out for Robida.

In Robida's room at his mother's house, police yesterday found homemade posters slurring gays, African-Americans, and Jews; neo-Nazi literature and skinhead paraphernalia; a makeshift coffin; and an empty knife sheath, according to police, prosecutors, and court documents.

In "Prochoice Puritans" she argues against what she sees as a dangerous trend of people who are supposedly prochoice continuosly emphasizing how morally disgusted they are by abortions in the name of political framing and how they aim for "zero abortions". A few select quotes from the piece (read the whole thing, though, it's not that long).

Do you think abortion is tragic and terrible and wrong, that Roe v. Wade went too far and that the prochoice movement is elitist, unfeeling, overbearing, overreaching and quite possibly dead? In the current debate over abortion, that makes you a prochoicer. As the nation passes the thirty-third anniversary of Roe, it is hard to find anyone who will say a good word in public for abortion rights, let alone for abortion itself. Abortion has become a bit like flag-burning--something that offends all right-thinking people but needs to be legal for reasons of abstract principle ("choice"). Unwanted pregnancy has become like, I don't know, smoking crack: the mark of a weak, undisciplined person of the lower orders.

and

Fact is, there will never be zero abortions. Half the women who abort are using birth control already--there are no perfect methods or perfect people, except maybe Laurie Gigliotti. Even in small, tidy, prosperous Sweden and the Netherlands, there are abortions. So how can there be zero abortions in America, with our ramshackle healthcare system, our millions of poor people, our high school graduates who can't even read a prescription information sheet?

and

these answers don't suggest to me that injecting more antiabortion moralism into the debate will help keep abortion legal and accessible. I'd say it is too moralistic already.

Hear, hear. As Atrios adds:

It's basically a Bill Bennett version of the world - use public shaming, if gentle, to make those bad girls behave. Sorry, not going to sign up for that. I have no desire to make women feel any worse about abortions and the circumstances surrounding them than they already do.

It just comes back to the same issue - choice. Whatever its utility as a political slogan, which I admit is probably somewhat mixed, it is still the underlying issue. I want a society where women can make choices about what to do with their uteruses without subjecting themselves to a public scolding by annoying males deciding which are good abortions and which are bad ones.

What are your favorite comic strips and webcomics?Ones with characters and like, lives and stuff

I mentioned earlier that I've been thinking about, at least occasionally, creating a comic strip with like, characters and a setting and a plot. I look around, and I don't really see any regular kind of politically-charged, feminist and foul-mouthed comic strip about the lives of 20-something Brooklynite girls of varying sexual orientations and ethnic backgrounds and single or not-single statuses. Like Sex and the City (minus the wealthy all-white Manhattan bits), meets Dykes to Watch Out For meets Beg the Question meets Doonesbury.

The only 20-something comic I really know of is the indie-rock strip Questionable Content, which has great dialogue and characteriszation and girls with glasses but doesn't get into politics or city life, it's more of an eternally frustrated love triangle type thing. And then there is Bob Fingerman's wonderful graphic novel Beg the Question, which is about 20-something Brooklynites in the 1990s (his backgrounds are amazing and really give you a feel of the city), but again, not particularly political, and mainly from a guy's perspective. Shutterbug Follies is about a red-headed girl with glasses, but it's less comedy and daily life, more adventure (and no politics).

As for me, my favorite serial comic strip of all time, hands down, is Dykes to Watch Out For (I also love Wendel and Curbside). I also love political strips with characters like the Boondocks, Bloom County and Doonesbury (particularly love the big ensemble casts of the latter two).

Anyway, tell me. What comic strips draw you in, and why? What characters do you find yourself wishing you could be friends with? Or wishing you could shake and make come to their senses?

I think the opinion I've read which most closely approximates my own is this one from Steve Gilliard (thanks to August who pointed me to it):

While the cartoonists have the right to say what they want, and no one should bow to terrorism, the problem with the cartoons was that they were genuinely offensive, bigoted, actually. Many suggested that Muhammad was a terrorist or approved of terrorism. It's easy for people in the West to assume Muslims are not rational people, who get upset at the slightest mention. But this isn't that case.

These cartoonists went out of their way to find the most offensive way to depict Muhammad and then sat back, stunned that people didn't like their uninformed takes on Islam.

It's really a slap in the face to law-abiding, hard working Muslims and says "this is what they really think about you".

What truly offends me is the way people are saying "well, they have the right to say it". We have the right to say many things, but why avoid the responsibility for your words.

Exactly. The whole "let's rerun these 12 cartoons over and over" thing just feels like a lot of right-wingers wiggling their fingers on the sides of their heads and saying "nyeah nyeah nyeah" to Muslims just to get them mad, which in the context of current intercultural relations (and that whole war on terror business) is ridiculous, to say the least. All it will do is bolster the Islamic fundamentalists case that Westerners are a bunch of callous assholes with no respect at all for Muslim people.

I'm not saying the papers should apologize. but their whole huge "you have no right to be offended by us deliberately violating one of the hugest taboos of your religion" cause is a bit weird. I thought the right-wing accused Newsweek of killing people for printing an article about Korans being flushed?

The violence that has erupted as a result is just awful, too. These gunmen and many of the protestors are asking governments to censor the press, and it just doesn't work that way. Blaming the citizens of an entire country for the decisions of a few newspaper editors makes no sense. But as a commentator I saw on MSNBC last night pointed out, there's nothing illegal about choosing not to buy Danish products or burning flags.

I'm an atheist myself. I'm freaked out by religious fundamentalism of all kinds. But I am really sick of all this "all Muslims are crazy suicide bombers, let's
do whatever we can to piss off Muslims" bullshit. Because a lot of the anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe (and here!) is not just directed against right-wing fundamentalist leaders and radical Islam, it's everyday bigotry and racism and mistreatment of Muslim immigrants and support for bombing the crap out of Muslims everywhere. Europe has to find a way to better integrate Muslim immigrants, there need to be some serious attempts at diplomacy and cultural understanding and communication on both sides, and this kind of thing really does not help.

Speaking of intolerant assholes of both the Muslim and Christian variety, have I mentioned that the U.S. sided with Iran on excluding gay groups from the U.N.?

...he's talking about the Tom Toles cartoon. He says it is IRRESPONSIBLE for Tom Toles to accuse Rumsfeld of being callous because he can't read Rumsfeld's mind or his heart. He says he doesn't believe in censorship but that the paper should have run a column criticizing the cartoon right next to it?!

Yet O'Reilly was happy to speculate about what Cindy Sheehan's son would have thought or felt... and of course, Toles was referring to something Rumsfeld actually said, a quote in which he called the troops "battle hardened."

Then he brings on a general who compares Tom Toles to a Nazi propagandist, saying his cartoon is just obscene. Obscene!

Now that the crazy Rev. Phelps (the godhatesfags.com dude who picketed Matthew Shephard's funeral) is picketing the funerals of troops killed in Iraq (because he said it's God's way of punishing America for being too gay), some states are considering laws against picketing funerals.

My followup post to my rant about ridiculous homophobic Brokeback Mountain cartoons. Jim Siergey has a good cartoon on the same topic, too, "Brokebacklash Mountain."

I didn't do two cartoons this week due to an unexpected freelance illustration gig that came my way. But I am seriously considering starting a comic strip (webcomic, at least) with real actual characters, as I mentioned in a post yesterday.

By the way, as some of you might have noticed, I'm blogging regularly again. Feel free to comment and say hello.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Cartoonist pisses off the Pentagon!

Go Tom Toles! Seriously, this is ridiculous. Tom drew a cartoon criticizing Rumsfeld for not caring about what happens to wounded soldiers, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff write an angry letter to the Washington Post claiming Toles hates the troops.

I've been a huge fan of his work since I was in high school, and he talked me and several other cartoonists into a salsa-dancing excursion at the 2003 AAEC convention:

When it comes to politics, I am an angry woman. You might have noticed that. But there is a softer side to me, a side that yearns to, I dunno, draw the occasional comic about nothing at all. I am a political cartoon junkie through and through, but there's something about strips involving actual recurring characters besides jerkhead politicians or myself. Characters whose lives might actually interest readers, as in Dykes to Watch Out For or Wendel or Doonesbury, or Calvin and Hobbes, or the personal strips in the K Chronicles.

So I'm thinking I might try to start, at least occasionally, drawing some simple little comic strips with an actual cast of characters. The challenge with a comic strip is that it has to be internally funny even if you don't know the characters, but that once you do get to know them, it's funny on a deeper, more personal level. Plus there have to be, you know, plotlines. And stuff.

We'll see. I could never give up drawing political stuff every week, though. I'm just too angry. I wish there were more hours in the day or that I had a magic time machine. Sigh...

I wasn't hugely impressed, and I was definitely turned off by all the "endowed by our creator" stuff. But I do think Katrina Vanden Heuvel is right that the Democrats have much bigger problems than a SOTU response slightly lacking in charisma and a bit overdone on the faith and family values and businessman talk ("bad management" "results", etc.) He did make some important points about cuts to education funding, job losses, and the like.

As for Bush, the only really exciting or new thing about the speech was the weird applause contest. After Bush complained that he'd been thwarted on Social Security "reform" last year, the Democrats all got up and clapped. Good for them. But before they get so self-satisfied and pat themselves on the back over one victory (albeit a large one) maybe they should ask themselves why they voted to confirm Roberts or let Alito through without a filibuster.

Also, my friends and I played a drinking game for every time he mentioned September 11 (only three times, I think), and "freedom." And we also drank whenever he said something really nasty in general, like when he made a little rant about "protecting marriage" and "activist judges" (what, like the ones who appointed him president in 2000, or the ones he just appointed to the SCOTUS?)

P.S. Can I just say that the commentators CNN had on before and after the debate should all go join Dick Cheney in his bunker and just leave our poor ears the hell alone? I've never heard such silly claptrap.